


The Children's Teeth are Set on Edge

by scribblemyname



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Handcuffs, Mentions of brainwashing, Natasha Romanov Joins SHIELD, Red Room Backstory, Spies & Secret Agents, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6174514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new day, a new world, a new organization. Natasha fired like her old sixteen-year-old self, and everything felt exactly the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Children's Teeth are Set on Edge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catandmouse10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catandmouse10/gifts).



> Heavily inspired by "I'll Be Good" by Jaymes Young.

Natasha stared in the mirror for a long moment. She thought she could see the glimmerings of fear behind her eyes, and it made her narrow her gaze, put on her war face without any expression at all as though it were merely a coat of makeup.

Memories plagued her, voices over her head, soft whispers on a venomous black widow tongue.

_You have too much heart._

_Natalia._

"Natasha?"

It was Agent Morse's voice coming from around the corner. Natasha painted on the curve of a professional smile— _Sincere, Natalia_ —and went out to join her.

"I'm ready."

There was something familiar in Agent Morse's gaze that met her. Her eyes held a world of understanding and gave Natasha the distinct sensation that Morse could see right through her, though that was ridiculous. Natasha was the best.

"Okay," Morse said simply, as though everything her knowing gaze implied was just casual misdirection. "Let's go meet SHIELD." She paused on the doorstep of Natasha's small apartment—new, courtesy of said organization. "Welcome by the way."

Morse led Natasha out into the light.

* * *

A new day. New handlers, new pain blooming in her fists as she beat them into a punching bag that spun and bounced beneath her strength. She threw out a leg, kick, fight, mantras pounding into her head.

_You have too much heart. Empty yourself._

A gun opened up to reveal its inner chambers. She slammed in a new round.

_Fill yourself with another's weaknesses. Paint the room with their blood._

Natasha raised the gun and aimed it at the far end of the range.

A new day, a new world, a new organization. She fired like her old sixteen-year-old self, and everything felt exactly the same.

* * *

Natasha gasped as she woke from clutching fingers at her throat. She lay her head back, turned her head to stare at her wrist clinging tightly to the head of the bed as though…

She jerked away instinctively, shot out from the tangle she'd made of her covers, and went out in the living room. Then stopped.

Agent Morse had spread herself across the couch, clearly asleep. It was this that gave Natasha the most pause. A likeminded soul would never sleep with an assassin like Natasha in the other room. Only courtesy or deception would put that evenness in Morse's deep breaths.

On quieter feet than she'd begun with, Natasha slipped past the couch into the kitchen and cursed SHIELD's lack of approval for alcohol at this stage in her probation. Good Russian vodka could wipe out the voices whispering softly in her mind, clouding her vision and mind with their oh, so convincing instruction.

_Natalia. You have too much heart._

She'd been weak. She'd accepted that agent's outstretched hand and offer, let Barton talk her in with gentler, more earnest promises of freedom than she'd ever heard before. She'd let him tell her she could be real. She could be Natasha.

_Empty yourself._

Natasha shuddered. She opened the refrigerator and took out Agent Morse's stashed iced tea, sipping it as she returned to her room.

She laid her wrist upward, snatched it down, and cradled it against her chest the whole night long.

* * *

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Morse's head tilted, voice soft, gaze flicking downward and away. She'd asked her own self the question once upon a time.

Natasha looked at Morse for a long time, waited until they were staring wary gaze against wary gaze. "Do you know what it's like to be unmade?"

A heartbeat, a sharp inhale, and hurt blooming up behind the other woman's eyes. Morse tightened her mouth and stated flatly, "I'm familiar with the pointy end of the brainwashing stick."

Natasha stared back. Does it ever get better? she wanted to ask, but she said nothing.

Morse's chin came up, a barely there gesture many wouldn't even notice. Her eyes hardened. "I've been the gun. I've killed under orders that later turned out to be suspect. I've made the hard calls because somewhere in the end, I tell myself I'm helping make the world a better place, safer." Her tone held such conviction, it set Natasha's teeth on edge and made her ache in the hollow places that filled her.

"I'm a Black Widow," Natasha replied. No one could pretend she made the world better, 'safer.' The word made her want to curl up her lip in disgust. Safety was for children, and never little widows in the making. Never them.

Morse shrugged. "If you could unmake yourself, what would you be?"

* * *

Day in, day out. Natasha went to SHIELD and stared at the targets at the far end of the range. She raised the gun, then lowered it.

She had been taught from a child she could be absolutely anything she wanted to be. She could make the world a safer place, catch her own makers in their own webs. She was the best.

She raised the gun and fired.

* * *

"You lied," she told him flatly.

Agent Barton sighed and let the thunk of his arrow into a bullseye speak for him. He turned to her, raised his eyebrows in a slightly questioning, somewhat annoyed look.

Natasha hated it when people interrupted her training, preferring to teach them better manners if she could, but this was not the Red Room. She did not train her fellow agents with violence and blood. She didn't spatter the walls of the gym and the ballet mats with red.

"You said I could be free of my past."

The voices chase her in soft, female voices, over her head, in her head, always, always, like memory was the only real thing left.

_You have too much heart, Natalia._

Like this man before her, this agent that saw a Black Widow and offered her herself.

_Natalia._

"Natasha." He breathed her name. There was none of the hesitance caged in Agent Morse's voice. He looked at her, and her own breath caught because he saw something she didn't.

She was a Black Widow. She was blood. She was war. She was a gun emptied of herself with another's weaknesses poured inside to kill them with.

"I only said you could be free." Barton stared at her, knowing gaze willing her to believe.

_You can make your own choices, follow your own heart._

Even then, the echo had been there, like the feel of the cuffs she rubbed off her wrist each night, still chaining her to a past and a room that gave her every gift she had.

She opened her mouth, only to shut it again, unsure of her own protest. She held out her wrist. "Why don't you put the cuffs on again?" she asked. I'm dangerous, she wanted to tell him. She said nothing.

He never looked at it, kept his gaze on hers as he wrapped one large hand around her wrist, leaned forward, and whispered, "No."

"Why?" She felt the words bubble out of her mouth, out of her control, red with her own weakness. "Why did you say no?"

He had orders to kill her. He'd been full of purpose and a mission, and he'd failed. He had thrown everything away.

Barton stared at her, that pity and pain welling in his eyes just like they had in Morse's. "Because I could."

Natasha stared at him for a long moment.

Because she could.

* * *

She went home and said nothing to Agent Morse. She curled up in her bed of SHIELD-issued cheap sheets and a bedpost unscarred, aware of another agent in the other room capable of killing her if she let down her guard. She made herself close her eyes to sleep.

Her mind buzzed with every warning sense in her body tingling through the softspoken, deadly words of her instructors. She ignored them until finally she fell into an aching doze that gave her no rest.

When she woke, brought abruptly out by the ringing alarm, Natasha stared at the ceiling of her room and smiled.


End file.
